What are your company's anti-values? | Hacker News Reader

What are your company's anti-values?

willsewell.com

294 pointswillsewell260 comments

Back when I worked at EA there were obviously many horrible aspects to its culture. But one thing I always thought was cool was that they had a notion of a "razor". This was a principle or guideline that was worded specifically enough to clearly slice up a set of options into whether they fit it or not.

When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make trade-offs. "Multi-player is the most fun mode," is a better razor because if you're trying to decide which features to cut, the single player ones are clearly it.

"Anti-value" is, I think, another way to say something similar.

This touches on a cognitive mistake I see often. We often naturally think of choices in terms of "yes or no". Do I want to go out for dinner tonight? Should I ask that person out? Should I buy that house?

But opportunity cost pervades all aspects of life. Our time and resources are finite and any "yes" choice is implicitly a "no" to the other options that give up the capacity to say yes to. It's very hard to make good choices without thinking of those other options.

Framing your values in terms of "razors" or "anti-values" is a good way to get out of the "yes/no" mindset and into the more accurate "which one" mindset. It helps you discriminate among options.

> When designing a game, "The game is fun," is a shitty razor because it doesn't tell you how to prioritize or make trade-offs

coming from countless hours of playing games and near zero hours making them, I'm curious why "this game is fun" doesn't help you make tradeoffs. I feel like concentrating on the game being fun would help avoid repetitive mechanics that would be tiresome or tedious (inventory management), frequent non-skippable dialogue, etc. Why is that not the case?

If I understand GP correctly they use "razors" analogous to philosophical razors [1], as a quickly evaluated rule of thumb to shave away options. "This game is fun" doesn't work for that, because often "does X make the game more fun" requires prototyping X and having some people playtest it. You can definitely make great games that way, but you are not really applying a rule of thumb anymore.

Compare that to "is this usable in multiplayer", "does it serve a narrative purpose", "can we show it in a trailer". All of those are quick to answer (but not all of them make for good games).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor

Not answering your question, but among my gamedev circle, "fun" is seen as a useless word because there are so many different possible meanings (challenging, soothing, exploratory, nice graphical effect feedback, nice music, social, etc) and often are contradictory with each other. We've seen countless times people setting merely "fun" as their goal, and then getting horribly depressed when the nebulous "fun" is never struck upon, with no clue how to make any ground in that direction.

Fun isn't a well defined, well understood thing. There's no quick and easy way to know if something will make the game more fun or not, you often have to guess and just try it out in a prototype. Fun is also subjective, so fun for who?

In the example given, adding something to multiplayer isn't more fun for people who don't play multiplayer, but it may well be for those that do and since they're the focus, the feature gets added. So "prioritize multiplayer" is a useful razor because you can act on it: does it add to multiplayer? yes, it gets kept, no it gets cut. Its actionable. Is it fun? Who knows, you gotta test it out first.

When choosing whether to do A or B, "this game is fun" usually leads to "why not both?".

> I feel like concentrating on the game being fun would help avoid repetitive mechanics that would be tiresome or tedious (inventory management), frequent non-skippable dialogue, etc.

These things are fun to many people. Just not you. Sometimes they are fun to me, usually not. I think "this game is fun" would lead to including more of this stuff, not less.

YouTubers in particular seem to like this kind of stuff.

From countless hours making games, it is because games can be fun in many different ways yet it is hard to make a fun game. One of the most common way projects fail is that they are trying to be fun in a variety of ways but not achieving player enjoyment in any of them.

I used to work with a great designer who used to say the goal was to take the un-fun out. That actually is a more actionable goal.

Perhaps it is easier to identify what's commonly considered un-fun than what is widely considered fun.

It is much much harder to design, build, and ship a profitable game that is fun in all aspects than most people realize.

A game is a very carefully balanced hanging mobile of hundreds of parts and it's very hard to tweak one without risking throwing others off. Inventory management might be tedious, but it may be that simplifying that throws off other more critical game mechanics. Or it could be that the feature ended up being made worse in the process of fixing an even more important mechanic and now the team has simply run out of time to circle back and improve it.

> frequent non-skippable dialogue

Dialog usually is skippable, but if it's not, there could be reasons. For example, games pretty often rely on unskippable transitions to load content in the background and minimize time spent staring at a loading screen.

Saying "make the game fun" is about as actionable as telling a musician to "write a good song".

Because "this game is fun" is too vague. To find good answers, you need good questions that are well-worded.

Think of it as setting achievable goals for yourself. "I want to improve my life!" is a useless objective; while "my appartment is dirty and I want it to be clean" is a useful one.

"Improving one's life" is so vague it's useless (are we talking about love? Health? Work? Family? Housing? Would you even know what to suggest to someone asking you for advice about this?) while "my apartment is dirty" is a clear objective with clearer solutions: "I'll clean it more often/hire a housekeeper".

"The game isn't fun" is just as vague, especially when you have to make choices regarding resources/money, and especially when "fun" is so different depending on people. If we're talking the Sims, for instance, some people will find more fun in creating sims; some, in creating houses; some, in actually playing with their sims. In this context, trying to make the game "more fun" would be meaningless. "These three sides of the game should feel equally developed" is already a bit better, though still very subjective.

I think it's because pretty much any conceivable game design decision will only be a difficult decision to make if there is disagreement on what is fun. In other words, you'll never have two game designers trying to make a difficult decision where one designer says "the thing I want to do is less fun" and the other designer says "the thing I want to do is more fun." They'll both think that the thing they want to do is more fun, because in the context of game design "fun" is essentially synonymous with "good."

Fun doesn’t mean anything, and people have fun regardless of whether a game or feature is good. My goto example is multiplayer is basically a hack on fun — anything is fun if you’re with your friends; from well-defined sports to poking a bloating corpse.

But going further, fun is not found in any particular feature; it’s an outcome of the total system. A game can be described as fun, or a sequence of events, but you can’t say that a helicopter spawn in an FPS is fun, or not, without further diving into all of the surrounding context.

And you dig deep enough and you realize that it’s not the helicopter specifically that you’re looking for — it’s the action-space it enables, or the potential counter-play (or lack thereof), or the satisfaction in steering, or that it’s simply the act of being rewarded for skilled play, or whatever.

Fun is at best a description that the game and its mechanisms didn’t impede the mechanisms you enjoyed operating.

It’s also why you have an internet argument where someone says “this game is not good, for reasons x,y,z”, and the response is simply “but I enjoyed it”, and it blows up into a nonsensical mess — the two are talking about totally different things; fun is only marginally correlated with good

This mirrors Netflix's old culture slide deck[0]

> adequate performance gets a generous severance package

> We’re a team, not a family; We’re like a pro sports team, not a kid’s recreational team

[0] https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664/

I'm finding that Netflix slide incredibly toxic, I'd never want to work for Netflix after reading that, no matter how skilled I was (they wouldn't want me anyway so nobody lost anything).

And that is totally fine and 100% the intent of that slide. You and Netflix don't match in terms of expectations. Id give kudos to netflix for being up front about it.

I fear "We're not a family" at this point is an oft copied mantra (I recall seeing this in GitLab's S1), same as Amazon's "missionaries over mercenaries" that's now prevalent (Coinbase, the most recent example), as well.

I fear "We're a family" at this point is an oft copied mantra

Of course I am assuming those that use said mantra are refering to the touchy feely version of family and we are not going down the 'what does family mean anyway' rabbit hole, where rivalry even Fratricide and Parricide, they even have a word for killing a family member.

Ironically, "we're not a family" may end up being nearly identical to "we're a family".

People distrust "we're a family" because it's an illusion, not because of the potential for an actual sort of "family" or friendship. But they may also come to distrust "we're not a family" once it becomes as cliche and they realize that every company they work for that makes such a claim will inevitably devolve into making the employee-employer relationship out to be more than it actually is or should be.

I disbelieve most corporate values because companies are run by humans, and humans are pretty bad at self evaluation. Well, that and I've had enough experience to tell me that explicitly stated corporate values usually mean very little in practice. Only you can unveil a company's values, though that's no easy task beyond some basic red/green flags.

Some of my strongest lifetime friendships have been made in small startups where everyone treated everyone like family. I don't mean the Cleavers, either, but a real family with internal spats, sibling rivalry, and embarrassing stories brought out at parties. We broke bread together, suffered loss together, celebrated victories together, and protected ourselves collectively from outside threats. We were welcome in one another's homes. One of my coworkers (at three different firms) and I married sisters. I met my ex wife at his wedding. It was a wonderful life experience, but not something that I think can scale beyond a couple dozen people. Anyone who's telling you their 200-person company or 5,000-person company is like a family is lying to you to attempt to buy loyalty or is deluding themselves.

May I ask, what you find toxic about them?

I thought them to be refreshing honest and clear (but have not yet read all slides).

I mean, it is also not attractive for me, because I would not put what is good for Netflix, over what is good for me - but otherwise I do not think a professional, internal competing sports team as a goal, is necessarily toxic.

I do agree that the honesty is refreshing.

That said, I personally feel like the mentality of "We will fire you if you aren't doing an _exceptional_ job" reads as a serious red flag. The implication here is that you should expect to work overtime and prioritize your job over all else. Even then, we might still fire you.

Of course I'd rather have a company being open and upfront about their unsustainable expectations, but I'd still prefer a company that values work/live balance of their employees. Would I say that Netflix's approach is toxic? Honestly, yes. But I do understand that this is just my own opinion.

>The implication here is that you should expect to work overtime and prioritize your job over all else.

I don't think that's right. The slide says:

"""

Hard Work — Not Relevant

We don't measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office

[...]

Sustained B-level performance despite effort generates severance

Sustained A-level performance despite minimal effort is rewarded

"""

The message seems to be that you don't have to work hard. They seem to say they want lazy employees that have a good work life balance, because they finish work early.

Whether that's toxic or not, that's another question. But I don't think they value overtime at all.

"But I don't think they value overtime at all. "

But they do value putting the company over yourself (and your real family).

This can probably have very toxic effects, if you are having problems at home for example (sick kids or whatever) and all they allways care about, is your performance right now. So definitely not the place for me - as I would never put a company over my children (and it sounds like this is expected, even though they would likely never phrase it this way), but there are people without family, who have their work as top priority, so this might work out for them.

Oh yeah, I see what you mean. Absolutely agree on that.

What I've seen happen at other companies that state they value impact over effort, openly discouraging overtime, is that eventually certain individuals will attain higher impact by not recording their overtime, who then pressure others to do the same. No, no one is directly rewarded for overtime, but effectively, yes, undocumented overtime becomes the expectation from your peers. That is toxic.

How do you know if there’s overtime involved? I’ve worked with people who could accomplish as much in two hours as I did in two days. Would it be “toxic” to work in such an environment?

If your colleagues are leveraging substantial undocumented overtime, you're going to find out eventually. If you know someone is in the office 40 hours a week and they submit massive pull requests first thing in the morning, even Monday mornings, for problems you know they hadn't solved or started the night or week before, you should suspect something's up. Sooner or later, if someone's breaking their neck, they will resent team members who aren't putting in the same effort, and they'll slip and admit to the amount of time they're putting in, directly or indirectly.

Granted, it's easier to hide this now when everyone's working from home.

> I’ve worked with people who could accomplish as much in two hours as I did in two days. Would it be “toxic” to work in such an environment?

No, why would that be toxic?

Why does it matter to you whether your peers are more productive than you because they are smarter than you, or because they work more? Is the former OK, but the latter "toxic"?

It matters because someone has to decide what A- and B-List performance means. And the performance ceiling will shift if people put in 60 hours constantly. They will get more stuff done (assuming all else being equal) and soon your 40 hour A-List performance will have degraded to B level and now you’re either pressured in also doing the unrecorded overtime to get as much stuff done, or you are fired (you’re B-List now since someone is beating your performance by around 33%).

First of all, you can't assume "all else being equal". People are different, and this is especially true for star performers.

If I'm a manager and I notice someone is consistently underperforming (compared to his peers) - it does not matter if the rest of the team is working overtime, or is smarter, or more experienced - I don't care. I will ask the underperformer to step it up (again, don't care if this means working harder, or smarter), and if no improvement after a set period, I will be looking for a replacement. I'm paying top dollar for top performance.

This situation is normal and expected in professional sports. I don't remember hearing about "bad work/life balance", or "being pressured into doing overtime" in conversations about elite athletes' performance. Should we treat elite SWEs differently?

Remember, this is in the context of companies stating they value impact over effort, the sort of places that brag about their work/life balance. If I'm accepting an offer from such an employer and taking this into account during salary negotiations, I will be rightly pissed off to find out the standard is secretly 60-80 hours a week.

If they're open about expectations, assuming I'm at a point in my life where the trade-off makes sense, then if the compensation is good, that's fantastic. Nothing toxic about that. Not that different from some US manufacturing workers getting paid hourly wages, who make the same kind of trade-off all the time, making damn good money for 60 hours of peak performance a week. Sure, they might end up paying for it by ruining their bodies and drop dead from a heart attack or stroke within a year of retirement if they make it that long, but the risks are no secret.

> This situation is normal and expected in professional sports.

Let's google. The NFL seems topical around this time of year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/01/heres-what-the-average-nfl-p...

> The minimum annual salary for a rookie active roster player with a one-year contract is $480,000 . . . A player with three years’ experience would command a salary equal to at least $705,000, while players with seven to nine years on the field must be paid at least $915,000 . . . the average NFL salary was only about $2.7 million in 2017 . . . That’s less than three-quarters of the average $4 million earnings of a major league baseball player and less than half the typical wage of NBA players, who earn about $7.1 million on average.

I take everything back! Let's not treat SWEs any differently. For that kind of money, I will gladly put in 80 hours a week.

This thread is specifically about Netflix work culture, as reflected in the old slide deck. Netflix does not brag about work/life balance, and is open about their expectation. Also, they pay their senior SWEs >500k a year. Not quite the NFL level, but it's also not as competitive (there is a lot more SWEs than pro football players). Not to mention serious health hazards involved in pro football.

So yeah, it seems like we are in agreement :)

> This thread is specifically about Netflix work culture, as reflected in the old slide deck.

This isn't just about Netflix. The over-arching topic is company anti-values. The context has narrowed since then, first to Netflix, then to a specific slide about not measuring people by hours worked, and so on. But for the heck of it, some other quotes from said slide deck:

> We don't measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office

> Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees.

> Honesty Always

> Pro Sports Team Metaphor is Good, but Imperfect

> Internal "cutthroat" or "sink or swim" behavior is rare and not tolerated.

Again, if the expectation for a workplace like that were 60-80 hours a week, and that fact is clearly and openly communicated, fine.

But if you're making those claims while your top performers are the ones putting in undocumented additional hours and pressuring others to do the same, then I insist that is toxic behavior. Yes, even if they don't brag about work/life balance, though I'll consider it even worse if they do.

> So yeah, it seems like we are in agreement :)

All sarcasm aside, no, we're definitely not!

But if you're making those claims while your top performers are the ones putting in undocumented additional hours and pressuring others to do the same, then I insist that is toxic behavior.

What if your peers actually worked 2 hours a day, and accomplished a lot more than you when you worked 8 hours a day? Would you feel pressured to put in more hours? Would this be toxic?

I'm sorry, but you keep rephrasing this question, I've answered, and I still don't see how the question is relevant.

Sorry, I can't find where you answered it. Quote?

I believe the question is relevant because you seem to equate delivering results with working long hours, and while the two are usually correlated, it might not be the case when talking about star performers. For example, if my peers are all like Jeff Dean in terms of productivity, I would probably feel inadequate. You could even say I would feel pressured into doing more - not by my peers or even my manager - I'd be pressuring myself. This, to me, does not mean the environment is toxic. And that's why I believe the environment at Netflix is not toxic (assuming no other issues).

I'm trying to understand what you mean by "toxic", that's why I keep asking the question.

They've chosen the best possible version of "Sustained A-level performance," that the person is capable of doing that with minimal effort.

There are a handful of people that are capable of producing "Sustained A-level performance" and for them this workplace probably seems ideal.

Even for the engineers that could reach this bar, it's a very high standard to apply constantly. There's another slide that gives a slight allowance for temporary performance issues, but that lack of security is hard for most people.

Slide 34 to be exact says this about Loyalty. "People who have been stars for us, and hit a bad patch, get a near term pass because we think they are likely to become stars for us again."

"A bad patch" is pretty loosely defined, if you burn out achieving something, or are assigned a problem that is particularly difficult, how much leeway do you have?

I don't think it would be an environment I would particularly enjoy, but I think to the original post's point this is a pretty great set of values because it really clearly articulates the trade-offs. If you are a 10x engineer and hate working at $current_company because they care about hard work and that's frustrating because you work smart not hard and you are comfortable with your career being contingent on consistent high performance, then Netflix is the place for you. If you work hard but think this would burn you out, look somewhere else. And that's what values should do, declare the trade-offs and take a firm stance on which things you value.

Anyway it’s not working, as I guess we can agree the Netflix client apps are pretty bad products probably not even C-level quality…

I interpret that as a positive sign. Every manager and company I've worked for has been too slow to fire under-performers.

If you've never done it, it's very hard, emotionally, to fire an under-performer. You see someone struggling and you know it's best for your team/company but now you're going to put that person out of a job.

I'm not excusing it, but I can see people putting off firing under-performers just to avoid feeling like shit.

I would say that one possibly toxic element to that is that it could mean that Netflix is not a place to grow. Do not expect help improving. Expect the door. That has other knock on effects like possibly hiding struggles, faking results, etc etc.

Does Netflix actually have such a cutthroat culture? I have no idea.

The slides are a bit contradictory. They talk about only keeping top talent but then also mention a major/minor league analogy. So what's the culture, really?

You do realize they offer top of market compensation (250k fresh grad, >500k senior SWE, etc) for what they are looking for?

So your argument would be, as long as the pay is right, toxic culture is allright?

I mean, as long as this is a individual decision, that would be allright with me - but pay does not negate toxic. It only makes it bearable.

But like stated above, I do not say that Netflix culture is toxic, as they are clear about what they expect: top performance above everything else. That this can lead to toxic situations, as we all are not only having good times - should be clear to anyone applying. But I suppose even at netflix they are aware of this and hopefully have plans to deal with temporary burn outs, other than instantly firing those underperformers.

So your argument would be, as long as the pay is right, toxic culture is allright?

No. Why would you think so?

Because the context was toxic culture?

No, the context was Netflix seeking top performance (results) from its employees. Whether this leads to toxic culture is a different question and up for a debate.

My point is a company that offers top compensation can and should demand top performance.

"Whether this leads to toxic culture is a different question and up for a debate"

And here I was thinking this whole thread was about that question ...

"My point is a company that offers top compensation can and should demand top performance. "

Anyway, sure they can. But no company can expect from me, to put the company over my self. A good company has those goals aligned. I get money - and they get performance. Win win. But I will not work to death for them, as then all my money would be worthless.

That is - no for-profit company can expect this from me. A non-profit on the other hand, that has truly utilitarian goals, that really benefit humanity - I might consider putting myself aside. But why should anyone sacrifice himself, so a company makes more money? That doesn't make sense to me. But of course it makes sense, that companies want their employes give everything to them.

no company can expect from me, to put the company over my self

Yes, I agree, they should not have said that. That should have been left implicit. When a certain pay threshold is crossed (e.g. triple the industry average), I would expect them to expect extra from me. This might mean working nights/weekends if that's necessary for me to be "top performer" compared to my peers. Netflix expects you to keep up with their performance standards. They don't care how you do it - by working overtime, or being brilliant and working 2 hours a day, it simply does not matter, just like in professional sports. If, as you said, you get money, they get performance, it's a win win. But if you get money, but they don't get the expected performance, you can't blame it on toxic culture. If your peers are delivering and you're not, then you're toxic, and you should probably look for an easier job with less pay.

Netflix itself uses the analogy of a high-performing sports team, or at least used to. So this would be like if the LA Rams say they will drop you from the team if you aren't NFL caliber. It's hard to read a straightforwardly high expectation to match the environment and coworkers as toxic.

Now, it is toxic if a mediocre organization tries to fire a particular good performer because they aren't exceptional, when clearly the rest of the organization also isn't exceptional. That is dishonest, delusional, etc.

Interesting, I had the opposite reaction. Great that they are upfront and honest.

I think claiming that "we are a family" is actually the toxic one. It's incredibly dishonest to claim that. No one gets fired from a family because the family is "right-sizing".

Even before I had a job, reading "we are like family" in advertisements just left me thinking of "well you walk out on a family at 5pm just because the event ended then".

The ol' "Irish Goodbye". Big fan.

"we're a family but if you don't do well enough gtfo"

It is like a family, just more like the family from Succession…

I don't think that's the part OP was speaking against.

It is a platitude, not toxic.

Being a "pro sportsteam" on the other hand could be considered toxic. I know of no more cut throat legal business than sports. They are aggressivly signaling that they push KPI missers out.

Q: Is wanting to succeed considered a bad thing?

If we are talking NHL level exceptations at my dayjob, ye, it is a bad thing.

Especially as there are no way of rating programmers as fairly as sportsmen.

> Especially as there are no way of rating programmers as fairly as sportsmen.

Oh boy, I guess you don’t follow sports too closely. There is endless debate about rankings and player value and statistics.

But I am digressing.

> If we are talking NHL level exceptations at my dayjob, ye, it is a bad thing

I would love to work in an extremely competitive environment where slackers are punished.

Systematic KPI missers must leave in any company: it is hard to understand why it could be otherwise, if you are not living in North Korea or Cuba. People who make one honest mistake or have a bad quarter due to family issues but otherwise are great performers fit in their culture, they explicitly mention that in slides.

They write that "we cut smartly to have stars in every position". That is dellusional.

Probably works well in NHL when you draft each year anyway and players do the same thing, like dentists.

My belief is that continuation is way more important than stars. Especially since recruiting (and not fireing) stars is a more or less random process anyway.

I imply unreasonable KPIs. Also, "right to work" has more in common with North Korean job safety (i.e. none) than say Spannish dito.

They explain in detail what does this mean in presentation.

This isn't exactly true. Other than NFL, American pro sports have pretty strong unions, and even if you get cut, you still get paid. You might even get paid more, even though you're not working. Netflix doesn't give out guaranteed contracts that continue to pay you even after you get fired.

Oh didn't know that interesting. I just assumed it was like corporate US, but a bit "more" due to the competitive nature. I guess Netflix choose the wrong analogy then with all their sports metaphors.

Reading the whole slide back to back, I am a bit disgusted. It is so smug. It is trying to be brutally honest, but it feels more like a cult pep-talk. The place like doubled it workforce in four years -- there is not way to be elite after that, even if they were before ...

Some families get together to have an intervention for their alcoholic brother and cut him off.

That takes years of building up until that happens.

Eh. That doesn’t really work though. An alcoholic (any addict) has to _want_ to change. The individual must make the choice. Nothing else will work long term. Often enough, addicts die due to some effect of the addiction, or commit suicide when they cannot live with some effect. I find that people often make poor judgement when confronting addicts. Every addict is an individual first, and while the route of their addiction may look similar to others it is never identical. Some addicts respond well to interventions. The intervention can convince some of the need to change. For other addicts, this only further entrenches the addiction due to some emotional response. This is especially true, in my experience, when the family was the source of the abuse that caused the depression that ultimately drove the addict to some substance for relief. The “cut off” rather than the intervention would (in some cases) be truly more humane. Some families operate on different philosophies and they would argue that to be of service to family no matter the cost is first. While laudable, I would disagree.

Source: I come from a family with many addicts: two uncles, sister, brother, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, cousin, great uncle, great aunt, three aunts, myself.

If you've ever been part of a family business, you'd know the approach to handling things is quite a bit different. When family dynamics come into play, you end up having to tolerate things and compromise things in ways that would be considered unacceptable in a corporation.

You find out your brother is pocketing part of the tips that are supposed to go to the back of the house.

Your son has been accused of sexual harassment by one of the waitresses.

What do you do? You're not going to "take it to HR". Any action you take here is going to be painful and is going to be challenged by other members of the family with an equal stake.

So I immediately recoil when I hear that I'm "family". Oh, you're going to look the other way when I get caught embezzling? We'll work something out when I get caught the second time? Didn't think so.

It's funny how people have different reactions to it. I find it quite compelling and well thought out. "We're a pro sports team" is a much better and less toxic mindset than "we're a family".

It is definitely more honest.

This is a signal that they have phrased their values well. A good values statement should polarize. It should disgust people whose ability to work effectively would be poisoned by the culture that leadership strives to maintain.

A recruiting process which discriminates against people who do not share their values will create a more secure sense of belonging among people who do -- even among underprivileged groups who would otherwise worry they do not really fit in.

Do employees from underprivileged groups stay at Netflix longer than comparable companies?

Who cares? Even giving credit to the point I think you're trying to make, the relevant comparison would be employees from underprivileged groups stay at Netflix as long, on average, as Netflix employees not from underprivileged groups.

Is that actually the case?

Should it be?

No idea! Certainly, their current DE&I reports are better than most tech companies ( https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-inclusion-report-2...), but finding turnover by demographic is hard. My point isn't "these cultural values do/do not conflict with DE&I", but that you were asking the wrong question even to begin to measure that.

I totally agree, they save both themselves and me the trouble of finding out if I have anything to contribute with at their place.

> I'm finding that Netflix slide incredibly toxic

I don't find anything in that deck even remotely toxic. I find it almost jaw-droppingly honest!

Honestly and toxicity are orthogonal. They're not opposite sides of the same spectrum. Seems to me that they are both honest and toxic.

> [Honesty] and toxicity are orthogonal

Q: What's our working definition for "toxicity", specifically in the workplace?

I'm not sure they're nearly as orthogonal as one might think. My experiences of toxic workplaces involved a great deal of dishonest behaviour and I'm struggling to recall much if any honesty.

If a slide deck says “management will attempt to throw you under the bus: be prepared and keep a paper trail”, that's both honest, and exhibiting dishonest toxicity. Whether you're toxic and whether you're honest about the toxicity are orthogonal.

What's an example relevant to the slide?

“Most of this slide deck is lies. A survey shows that 97% of our employees think our company culture is improving, and 86% believe that this slide deck will be true in 6 months' time.”

Agreed, it's much better to be upfront about it, to avoid wasting time and money on employees that don't fit in (and, as a side effect, avoid hurting those people).

The reason I believe they're showing a work environment that would be toxic to me, is that the line "> adequate performance gets a generous severance package" does not stand alone, it's only part of it, they're giving me the general vibe that I should be constantly scared of being the next one to go, that my best will only be good enough until they find someone better..

I don't mind competition, there's always competition, but for me personally, I don't want fierce competition and high pressure to be part of my daily life, not outside recreational activities where the stakes are "get fired for doing an adequate job". I like to do more than is expected, but if what is expected is by definition more than what is needed, well, then I would have to do more than more than what is needed, I don't even know what that is, and I'd not want to constantly think about it and wear myself down from trying to achieve it.

> I like to do more than is expected, but if what is expected is by definition more than what is needed [..]

Do (m)any companies attempt to drive sales by describing a product as "adequate"?

If your child sits a school test and the teacher describes the result as "adequate" would you be content?

In the workplace why wouldn't one want to always aim to do "good" work (which is very definitely one step above "adequate"). That doesn't mean amazing, outstanding or exceptional. It also doesn't imply pressure.

Why would anyone approach a keyboard if they weren't attempt to do something good?

Put another way, who gets out of bed aiming to be adequate? It's not like it even sounds like an aim, it sounds like it happens when you're not paying attention.

There are a lot of things that I am o.k. with being "adequate" at. I am just fine with being "adequate" at driving for example.

Lots of software I write just has to be "adequate" because the consequence of failure is minimal.

> Why would anyone approach a keyboard if they weren't attempt to do something good

..asked a comment on Hacker News. Maybe 'good' would be better replaced with 'of high quality'. Maybe.

It might be better to be upfront about being toxic than to be secretly toxic, but I'd say it would be even better still to not be toxic.

This is more up to date as stated in the slides:

https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

In the financial sector people over process is just not realistic, too much regulation makes sure that will never happen.

Independent decision-making is also hard to do, as soon as something requires a budget, you can forget about the independent part.

And maybe you can have fewer rules, but instead they will be labelled processes and generally end up having the same effect.

I do agree that highly effective people should be kept, e.g. people who are not afraid to move out of their chosen comfort zone once in a while.

If I should state two core values, they would be critical thinking and curiosity.

>> people over process is just not realistic

Invest in people understanding the reasons for something, and allow them to ensure it's upheld. A relevant domain-less software analogy is testing; you can mandate some level of testing, and it will be a burden, a morale killer, and constantly fail to be upheld, or you can work to ensure everyone understands the benefits of testing, create space for people to write tests and automate their execution, and then rely on culture to ensure testing happens. I've been in places that tried to mindlessly mandate corporate policies to ensure compliance; it resulted in delays and low morale, and extremely patchwork adherence (I left that place still not knowing if we were compliant or not). I've also been at a place that implemented SOX compliance; they didn't mandate anything, just "we're becoming part of a publicly traded company. Here is what the goal is. Here is some training to help understand what sorts of things we now need to be mindful of. Here is a person who you can talk to to help understand what that means for you. This is our highest priority right now". Morale stayed high, the results were good, and completion was -early-.

>> as soon as something requires a budget

Everything requires a budget. Headcount is a budget. The point is give people problems to solve, the relevant constraints, and let them work, rather than micromanage the solution. Maybe that's an industry failure, but don't confuse it for a unique constraint on that industry, rather than just a universal problem in that industry.

>> And maybe you can have fewer rules, but instead they will be labelled processes

Process exceptions exist. Rule breaking exists. And failure to break process/rules when you should have happens too. The point isn't to not have a sensible default, but to instead arm people with knowledge so that they pick the default when it makes sense to, and deviate when it makes sense to. It's the same distinction around "best practices"; they're not, they're just reasonable defaults. And by not dictating a process, you allow evolution in the de facto process the teams follow, to improve the process. I've seen companies attempt to revamp their internal processes from a top-down model: universally not pretty. I've also seen teams and departments retro and iterate, and see constant improvements.

What is adequate and what is the frame of reference? If adequate is average by some objective metrics and the frame of reference is Netflix itself then they would need to be terminating half their work force annually to make good. This sounds like braggadocio to me.

"Completed their tasks in a timely manner when asked" sounds good enough to me.

The real problem is Netflix rally refuse to hire merely competent staff for boring work? Do they really need 10,000 major innovations every year?

Even pro sports teams have paid support staff working with the "players".

The point is that even for boring work (e.g. a janitor) it’s better to hire one really good worker than two average ones.

And good luck retaining your highly paid janitor. Someone has to be the coaster in a workplace.

Why? They are getting double the average janitor salary. Why would they want to leave?

Because then you break the rule of 'everyone must be excellent'. In a room full of geniuses, do many people choose to mop the floor?

But obviously if you're an excellent janitor, you're not breaking the rule, right?

Also, I don't see anything wrong with choosing to mop the floor - especially if you're really good at it.

This is arguably why they started piloting a new grad program in 2021. The main product is built -- like, really built. No need for such a strict definition of 'pro sports team.'

Netflix pay is ridiculously high and they are really trigger happy about hiring and firing. The culture is, well, odd. If the pay wasn't so good it would definitely seem abusive, but it is high enough and they're transparent enough about it that I don't think anybody gets very upset.

My interview was cancelled halfway through because the third interviewer didn't like me. shrug

If only they spent as much time expanding their catalogue as they do making slides they'd probably leave the competition in the dust.

I really like the culture deck, but surprisingly I find myself disagreeing most strongly with the expenses part, "travel as you would if it were your own money." When I travel with my own money, I'm going to fly basic economy and stay in a Holiday Inn Express. But I would be pretty outraged if a billion-dollar tech company wanted me to do either of those things while traveling on its behalf.

My current employer's approved hotel list is pretty ritzy, much nicer places than I would stay in on leisure travel... and that's kind of the least they can do to offset the general imposition of work travel.

When I travel with my own money, I'm going to fly basic economy and stay in a Holiday Inn Express

I don't know about you, but if my salary was $500k+ [1] I'd probably fly business class and stayed at the best hotels when I go on vacation.

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Netflix/salaries/Software-Eng...

You'd be surprised. Right off the top you're paying 45% of that in taxes, and if you're saving less than 25% you're failing the marshmallow test in a world-historically spectacular way. FIRE is very popular with this crowd and most save a lot more. You would own a home; that would cost you 10-15% at least. A Netflix engineer who is pretty bad with money but not a totally self-destructing addict might do as much as $75-100k/year in discretionary spending.

That's an insane amount of money! And against that figure business-class tickets ($10k) and fine hotels ($5k/night) are accessible. But significant. You are probably traveling several times a year, and not solo. Blink and you'll piss it all away.

I just googled a week-long vacation in Paris in the first half of June: a non-stop business class round trip from LAX is $2,100 per person, and the most expensive hotel I found in the center of Paris is $1,500/night. So for me and my partner this vacation would cost ~$5k for plane tickets + ~$11k hotel + say a grand per day on shopping and dining. The total is $23k. That would be less than one month salary after taxes. Definitely not something I'd fret over.

That is really cheap, definitely pandemic pricing. You usually can’t get biz class seats for just $2k round trip.

I agree. But the point is - even if it was 30k or 35k, I would still do it without thinking twice about it. I’m perfectly content with spending one month salary on a vacation.

That’s more than my yearly salary was in 2017 (23k), just to put that in perspective.

If biz class is $10k and economy is $1k, I'm taking economy even though I make enough money to afford $10k. I just can't justify it. Same with a hotel at $500/night vs. $1500/night...The former I can justify (barely), but the latter just seems insane. If I was a multi-millionaire than things would be different, but normal people luxury is good enough for normal people like me.

I've taken biz class before when it made sense (e.g. $1500 from Beijing to LA one way when economy cost $1000 for the same trip). I've also stayed in a $400/night pool villa in Bali (with a $900 round trip biz class ticket from Beijing via Hong Kong...but that was a steal, RIP Hong Kong Express Airlines), both worth it, both seemed really luxurious to me, I can't imagine doing more than that (though I guess with today's high inflation, it is inevitable that the $400 pool villa will cost $1000 soon).

I mean I have spent a month's take-home from a not-too-dissimilar tech industry position on a year's travel, but that was 7 trips and compensating for the 2020 lockdown. On one vacation it's a lot!

Are you talking about a hypothetical scenario or do you actually do this? I am asking because as people start earning more money, lifestyle creep introduces new types of expenses. So they also have expenses to think about other than business class tickets. Most well-to-do folks that I know tend to spend more hotels than on the travel. Very well-to-do folks do spend on business class tickets though, but a $500k job doesn't fall into that category in my opinion.

I make 250k, and I'm actually tempted now to book that business class flight to Paris - I expected it to cost a lot more. I would not spend 1.5k/night on a hotel because I'm sure I can find a good one for 1/3 of that. So it's not entirely hypothetical for me. If my salary doubles, this becomes a much easier decision. But I don't go on long distance vacations often, so when I do it's easier to justify the costs.

Disclaimer: I work for a small e-commerce firm named after a large river, opinions are my own. Writing in response since the company I work at is one whose values is quoted in the article.

My initial approach to the values was a similar "Who cares, these are bland corporatese" one. It wasn't until a 10+ year senior engineer on my team discussed the trade-offs between the values in an architecture meeting that I really understood the purpose. Take two of the values[1]:

"Dive deep" vs "Bias for action" - these have an inherent tension between the two. You can justify any action with either one, but it is about knowing when to apply what. You do not want to be Diving Deep as your first action when you are oncall and your alarms are going off in every direction, but it may need to be your third.

"Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit" has opposite ideas written into it! Having backbone is about being able to back up your position with as much data and research as you can. Disagree and Commit is about not being emotionally invested in your position and not taking things personally when the team chooses to go another way. It is recognizing the fact that you may be working in an area of ambiguity where no one side can be proven right before the fact.

Like most worthy things in life, there is a lot of nuance to these that cannot be expressed in a pithy 140 (or 280) character limit. But the idea that you should have "anti-values" is a very, very useful one. It allows you to think through different scenarios and explain what your team/organization/company would prioritize when there are competing priorities.

[1] - https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/principles

Thank you for raising the point about contradictions in values. I tried to work it into the original blog post, but I felt like it detracted from my main point.

I previously felt these contradictions are problematic because they make it harder to use values for prioritisation. It's a good point you make about different values being applicable in different contexts. I wonder whether the context can be incorporated into the value?

For example "Bias for action when the cost of failure is low". In an oncall incident, restarting a stateless service is worth trying even before the problem is understood in depth, because risk of failure is low. There are potential actions in an oncall incident that could quite easily make things much worse - then it's probably worth diving deeper before taking action.

It might not be pithy enough for the value itself, but I think it's at least adding this kind of context to the subtext like Amazon have done in the page you linked to.

I like this suggestion from another sub-thread:

> bias for action when it's a reversible decision

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30376853

The trade-off question is interesting.

I think for us, an implied anti-value would be "Focus on the core product and say no to some customers"

As OP said, no-one would deny that focusing on the core product is bad but at what cost? We have failed in the past by taking on custom work for the cash, and it helped us bootstrap. But to scale, the custom work needs to go away and we need to give the maximum value to the broadest number of customers through the core offering.

I haven't seen that anywhere I have worked. Normally this is a form of double speak. Developers claim to "focus on the product" but typically the only focus is upon the developers' core strengths first and only then fit the product into the pieces left over.

You can tell difference between focus on the product and focus on yourself with metrics and how readily people are eager to ignore numbers using excuses from poorly formed reasoning reflective of a more honest intent.

I thought that anti-values were the true, unstated values of an organization. Some examples from pockets of my org…

“The more important you are, the less you touch code/servers/things”

“Lots of meetings means you’re important.” (People will frequently humblebrag “I have 13 meetings today”)

“Create a problem, present a problem, let someone else solve, celebrate the solution.”

There’s also many positive values that I think outweigh these anti-values.

I wonder if I’ve misunderstood, but as a developer, I like being given problems, rather than solutions. I’ve also found being able to formulate a customer or business problem well enough that others can come up with a good solution is a real skill which (IMHO) should receive recognition.

Oh yeah me too. I mean create a problem like “log in and delete the config so the system crashes” then say “it’s broken who can fix.”

I love being presented with puzzles and problems. I hate people messing up, creating crises, and pushing the mess off to other people.

A company always consists of individuals that have to make trade-offs, so to the extent it has a cohesive culture at all, it will have values that are expressed in those trade-offs. But values (or anti-values) that a company publicly espouses do not need to coincide with its actual values: a value statement of being inclusive does not prevent a culture of bullying, and a value statement of putting the customer first does not prevent the actual value being to screw the customer whenever profitable.

"Descriptive" vs "aspirational" values, if you will.

This actual vs described values mismatch is a red flag and it could be an easy way to discover toxic culture. When applying for a job, you usually have multiple interviews - HR, team, direct manager. It makes sense to ask all of them about their values and compare the answers.

I’d say the opposite, there needs to be a delta between values and actual behavior.

I want to be a good husband, dedicated employee, etc. Am I? I’d like to think more often than not. But we all err, and I value the transparency/courage to ack that we are not perfect on our values and still have a long way to go.

For me the a flag would be if a person/company is not willing to acknowledge they are not as good as they public values are. (Because how can they improve if they can’t even ack it).

You mean that you should not hide of the difference between values and behavior?

Because there's nothing on that comment that actually supports the difference. And if you are being honest, descriptive values should describe your behavior very closely.

The thing you're struggling with is the parent's humility.

Value: be great at everything all the time

Parent: I try very hard but often fail

You: then you must be dishonest about your values

Humility is a virtue not a vice.

Not the OP, but that situation seems to indicate espousing unrealistic values at the least or am I misreading what you are saying?

> then you must be dishonest about your values

Hum, no, but then he is talking about the "aspirational values" that the GP pointed.

There are some reasonable explanations though:

* The actual values have changed over time but the value statement hadn't been updated in a while

* Different parts of the company genuinely have different values

I don't think either of those necessarily indicate a toxic culture.

Totally agree that it does not point to toxic culture per se. It's just an easy way to spot something wrong at this angle.

Though both explanations may also point to something:

* If values changed, but company did not bother to communicate them, then they are not important and not applied in daily life. This is not necessarily a bad thing at the moment of observation, but it may lay a foundation to toxic culture eventually.

* If different parts of the company have different values, then the decisions where those values would have been applied may result in a conflict between those parts. Red flag.

IMO the only way to have aspirational values is to make them part of perf/the job ladder. Most typical "value statements" ought to be descriptive.

A big reason why Amazon's leadership principles (LP) are so ingrained into its culture is because it's a part of every single formal process in the company. If not officially (promo docs, interviews), then at the least implicitly (corrections of errors [COE]).

This is true and i am inclined to try and ask questions about them. My last company had a “no jerks” policy and i was floored when they actually followed through in firing a (talented) PM who was kind of a jerk. One warning, then he was gone as fast as he came.

I’m not sure i could ask smart and direct enough questions to really assess this but hope i can at least sniff out the bs.

> “Learn and Be Curious” - what might that cost us? Maybe focus (because it’s ok to go down rabbit holes in order to learn something). So how about “Optimise learning over focus”? Maybe, maybe not.

A couple of the values pulled out here are from the Amazon Leadership Principles. So there's actually an answer to this question! The opposite of "Learn and Be Curious" is "Bias for Action" and "Deliver Results". The Amazon LPs are designed to have tension with each other. You can't embody all of them at the same moment. Which ones you prioritize are contextually dependent. Which is also helpful for dealing with conflict and disagreement because so many arguments are people talking past each other not realizing that they're actually misaligned on an underlying assumption and wasting energy arguing about how to execute.

"I don't think this is a good path forward, we should take our time to 'Dive Deep' and do more research"... "Ah, that's the issue. We've already agreed as a group the prioritize for 'Bias for Action' because of <reasons>"... "Hrm. In that case I can understand why this path makese sense. If you're all confident that's the right priority here then let's go."

Do the LPs themselves make it clear when they're supposed to be applied?

Don't worry, that is probably another one of the LPs. Maybe "Good leaders are right, alot"?

So no True Scottsman^h^h^h^h good leader would ever be confused about which LP applied

No, and it's a source of strain for many people at Amazon. There are, however, two LP's that are understood to stand well above the rest of the others: "Deliver Results" and "Customer Obsession."

No. So while it (IMO) makes for a more productive debate (you discuss which of the LPs it’s most appropriate to prioritise), it also allows what people refer to as weaponising an LP. I know I’d had such a claim laid on me in that I’d use “Bias for Action” to justify what I wanted. Which there is some truth to. But as another reply mentioned the LPs of “Customer Obsession” and “Deliver Results” overruled all others. My bias delivered on those two so nobody seemed too concerned. As far as I can tell the system was working as designed.

Most teams also have a set of tenets they embrace that are more team-local refinements of what you stand for and how you work. The group I was in had “Bias for Action” and “Earn Trust” as the things to prioritise. Make customers happy, increase their trust in you along the way, deliver results, and do it quickly… it made for a simple framework for decisions and left a lot of autonomy for working out your own plans for execution. You don’t need to reach consensus on _how_ you’re going to do it. Just do it.

Sometimes I think these values statements are a substitute for employees understanding why the company makes money and the factors that contribute to that.

Without that understanding, it's like there is a hierarchy of companies where the companies where everyone "gets it" on revenue are in their massive exponential growth phase like startups with small teams, then there are the ones who factor it out into KPIs, and the job is literally to move the line on that KPI at scale without any other deep understanding, but their company explosive phase is over and their growth is linear - and then the final company type is where the real revenue factors are effectively secret, and there is a solid long term cash flow the company mainly optimizes its costs over, with no significant forseeable growth other than stock volatility.

Depending on the growth phase of the organization, values and anti-values are sort of moot, as it's a question of what real growth factors your teams understand and are aligned with pushing in a confluent direction. I'd be concerned if someone were sincerely indexed on values, as it seems like a substute for, "we do this thing well that solves this problem for these customers and that makes money so that we can support our families," and anything beyond that seems kind of weird in comparison.

Sure, I've worked for pre-PMF companies that looking back I suspect they were in-effect NFTs for financial/portfolio engineering so there wasn't really a clear way to make money, and they spent a lot of time on inspirational values stories, but that effort should have been spent on finding product market fit.

To me, the only meaningful values quesiton is, when you know who the customers are, do you want to solve that problem for those people? Seems straightforward.

This is a very good test to determine priorities. If you simply ask "what should be done?", there are too many answers. A better question is "what needs to be done so badly that you would sacrifice other worthwhile things to do it?".

I don't see any clear meaning to the term "anti-value" in this article.

It seems to imply that a "value" means "more". It does not. "Frugality" is a value of that is a behaviour deemed important to follow, it's not an "anti-value" (whatever that might mean).

Similarly, "move fast, break things" means you value action and risk-taking.

I was expecting "anti-value" to mean a behaviour deemed negative and to be avoided.

Wasteful/free spending is the negative behavior to be avoided if you value frugality.

Overly cautious, ponderous delivery is the negative behavior to be avoided if you value “move fast, break things”.

I believe what author means by 'anti-value' is the other side of trade-off, which you are willing to compromise.

Like in 'move fast and break things', you are willing to compromise reliability/stability in favour of speed.

How is "break things" not a negative? That seems really clear to me and I think is an excellent example!

If you advise people to "move fast, break things" then obviously you consider that this is a positive.

"Break things" is also obviously not to be understood in isolation. Of course breaking things for no reason is not positive. It means that you will break things if you move fast and take risk and that it is unavoidable and worth it.

I see it being like this:

Value: move fast (positive)

Anti-value: break things (negative)

Breaking things is not positive normally, but it's the compromise for moving fast.

But it's neither. It's "move fast, break things" as a whole to illustrate values of action and risk-taking.

I think the other responses have explained the definition I had in mind for "anti-value".

"Frugality" is a bit less explicit than "move fast _and break things_. I think the reason it could be considered an anti-value is because it implies obvious _costs_. For example it can cost time in "shopping around", or it could mean that you miss out on opportunities - for example missing out on a great employee because you pay below market rate.

Hmm, for my company it would be something like: Don’t upset the customer, so move slow and be careful.

But that’s only what is desired by the company. Individuals inside the company still push people to do things quickly at the expense of quality.

We also have leadership principles: ‘Play a team sport: so keep discussing everything with everyone until nobody disagrees (either through actual agreement or exhaustion)’.

That sounds exhausting sometimes someone will need to take charge..

btw the agile manifesto (and similars) has such "we value X over Y" phrases.

Another thing; as this one says, the values are the rules (well, should be). Breaking (intentionaly) them is a compromise needed sometimes. While not following, is different matter.. https://8thlight.com/blog/stephen-prater/2020/09/15/values-r...

This idea of anti-values helps explain the brilliance of Google's "focus on the user", a value which I did indeed remember and frequently use as justification for a course of action frequently. The anti-value / tradeoff is implicit but clear enough: focus on the needs of end users over other stakeholders. This was a very useful heuristic in Web DevRel because there's often a tension between making something easy for developers versus making something easy for users. E.g. making a site accessible makes it easier for users at the expense of more work & complexity for the developers.

Love the idea of anti-values. Although I feel what the author is doing is trying to upgrade values towards guiding principles, which really resonates with me.

I'm a Lego Serious Play certified facilitator and what we do with one of our workshops is helping organizations defining what we call Simple Guiding Principles (SGP). SGP's are identified by an org as a set of principles that can help guide autonomous decision making.

The example "Optimise learning over focus" is a perfect SGP as it gives the individual a practical principle to follow, for example when prioritizing his/her time.

Unlimited* PTO policy

*Maximum 25 days a year after 15 years of employment

Allowing "Welcome to the insane asylum" to be the standard greeting new hires receive. It is a great way to instantly demoralize people and instill fear on their first day.

- Can I get promoted?

- You can't even get paroled.

No bullshit [1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210311001446/https://www.aussi...

Edit: Switched to an archive.org version in response to comments about a captcha being used at the source URL.

Sorry, but the CAPTCHA is probably great at filtering out bots, but in this case it also filters out potential readers.

In my social media profile image I use a Saint Augustine maxim for friendship:

Ubi amicita est, ibi idem velle et idem nolle.

"True friendship is in, same likes and same dislikes." [1]

Is the best radar (sonar?) I've found to predict and sense how shallow or deep a friendship with any person you'll have.

Now you can use it as a generator of the types of relations with individuals that you company has/wants to have: founders, developers, marketeers, commercial, support, partners and customers.

[1] So the dislikes part you might take it as the anti-value notion proposed here but is still a value.

PS: about the anti-value notion, I think we're still talking about values. Like a value matrix you have in your deep psychology that is symmetrical. It has the values of the things you're attracted to and the things you are repelled from. Like all the cells in the matrix being little vectors that will eventually synthesise a final position on everything you input.

I call this "values in conflict", and it is by far the most interesting way to look at culture and values in an organization. For example: Almost every company today says that they value their customers. It has become fashionable to say that you are even customer obsessed.

On the other hand, almost all companies also say that they value their employees and want to respect their work-life balance and QoL.

But what about when a deliverable is going to be late and it will negatively impact a customer. What do you do then? Crunch hard to ship on time so the customer is impacted? Tell your customer the deliverable will be late so your employees can go home and spend time with their families? Try to split the difference down the middle and probably annoy everyone?

That's when values get interesting. When they stop being a list of nice things, and start being a framework for how you intend to behave in difficult circumstances.

No discussion of company values would be complete without a link to Bryan Cantrill’s classic talk, “Principles of Technology Leadership”. https://youtu.be/9QMGAtxUlAc

Uber once had a stated company value of “Always be hustling”. Really.

The point in the article that values should lead to decision making criteria is crucial, but not actually what they are used for in practice. I think it practice they are meant as a framework for doing performance assessments. At least this was how it was in my previous companies. I always thought that was horribly cultish, because tthe interpretation of such pithy sentences is really subjective. A sentence like "Move fast and break things" could be interpreted as "try a lot and don't worry if things fail once in a while" but it could also mean "keep up and leave anyone who can't lying in the dust". Those interpretations represent two different companies. The former I would be willing to work at, the latter, not so much.

I've found you can determine a company's values based on who gets more resources: e.g. raises, promotions, etc.

Similarly, a company's anti-values could be discovered by who gets less; e.g. passed over for promotion, given a 'window seat', laid off, etc.

I work at a major bank and their anti-values are behaviors that tarnish their reputation. Examples of reputation damaging actions are regulatory investigations, fraud, illegal financial activity (even if unintentional or unknown to the bank at the time).

As a software developer this is quite nebulous. The bank protects its reputation by prioritizing risk analysis and ethics first in all its internal decisions. As an industry these qualities do not exist in any professional capacity in software. In software, just like in absolutely every employer, we do whatever we want so long as it eases hiring, everything else be damned.

I like the idea of anti values, the idea you have to trade something off.

It doesn't always make sense though. The only company I've worked at whose values actually resonated with me, and evidently a lot of other people there, was at Maersk. They are [1]:

* Constant care * Humbleness * Uprightness * Our employees * Our name

They were a great place to work and I saw those values embodied there. Hard to see what the anti values would be for those.

The basic principle they are working on is building trust.

[1] https://www.maersk.com/about/core-values

not necessarily my company's anti-values, but I had some fun making up some;

  * avoid negativity
  * hide the truth
  * ego outperforms facts
  * kiss ass
  * promote incompetence
  * stick to your guns

What are your the values you came up with, if those are the anti-values?

YC jobs used to have a good version of this, I think. They put two values in opposition, both couched in positive terms, and asked which one you prefer. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it now.

Assume positive intent -> Anti-value: Forgoing the ability of accurately assessing the other party's intent.

Even the original value itself was problematic since rarely was the intent positive and assuming it was based your actions on a wrong assumption. Depends on the people you work with naturally, but in this particular organisation there was an abundance of people looking out for themselves mainly; e.g. avoiding work, shedding responsibilities, lying, twisting facts, etc, and especially so in management.

I just did this exercise with my own company values and it was great. By adding the anti-value, I realized a couple of our "values" aren't really our values. Very powerful!

I like this, and I agree that it is a lot more expressive of company culture than generic positivity (would love to see this applied to politics, too).

The only companies I can think of who do this are the Facebook example from OP, and some of the big investment banks, who make it pretty clear that they do not give a shit about anything except how much money they make. Unfortunately it seems only assholes and sociopaths are transparent in this regard :-/

> it seems only assholes and sociopaths are transparent in this regard

Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath, if this was true every company would be transparent. As that isn't the case, we know that it does not necessarily have anything to do with being an asshole or a sociopath.

This. It has less to do with personal character and more to do with the incentives baked into the company.

> Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath

That's a big generalization without any argument to back it up.

What is there to give arguments for? Either you've worked in a few companies and you have friends that have also done so (in which case it'd seem obvious), or you're part of a class that doesn't work (or you are a C-level employee yourself). In the latter cases, nothing I say will convince you. In the former case, we have enough shared environmental background that you understand what I'm saying already.

Given those facts, I didn't see why a further paragraph of background would be valuable: My point would not land with more people regardless of whether or not I wrote that paragraph.

Your point states that all C-level employees are sociopaths. Logically, if I can provide you with a single example of a non-sociopath C-level employee, your point would be invalid. Of course I don't believe that you are literally saying that every single C-level employee in the entire world is a sociopath, but merely that the majority or a significant portion are.

> My point would not land with more people regardless of whether or not I wrote that paragraph.

It would, if you could provide me with some data that supports your generalization. If it was true, surely there would be some research backing it up.

I think there might be a big sample bias. People on your own level or the level above but not your boss, can't "mess with you" in the way a C-level can. I.e. bad people don't stand out as well.

A clear example would be cops and cashiers at Walmart. The later can hardly mess with you at all, even if he would be a bad person.

On the other hand security guards at night clubs and cops have about the same opportunity to mess with me, and I can easily say the guards on average are worse people.

I think it's somewhere in here, this novella or whatever it is called The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”

Of course that isn't actual data, but the analysis explores the idea that only sociopaths make it to the top in a great deal more depth, if what you're looking for is depth of background and understanding of where this idea comes from, rather than why this specific person who you responded to believes it to be true.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Your comment can be summed up as:

"Either you share my twisted view of the world or you don't. I choose not to believe that others can objectively evaluate evidence, and there's the risk that they may not come to the same conclusion that I did."

Unwillingness to be seen as an asshole by anyone makes it impossible to maintain boundaries unless you interact with solely with emotionally stable people.

Unwillingness to accidentally act like an asshole makes it impossible to act swiftly and decisively unless you trust yourself to be infallible in your judgement.

This is not the same as habitually acting like an asshole.

> Every C-level employee is an asshole and probably a sociopath

My experience has been mixed, there were good ones also, but only at the small and medium sized businesses.

Small and even medium sized businesses dont really have C-level employeees. They might have titles that sound like that - but they dont sit on a different floor where mere mortal workers security passes are not permissioned to travel.

> but they dont sit on a different floor where mere mortal workers security passes are not permissioned to travel.

Why is that a requirement to be "really C-level"?

You cant be mixing with the little people, and of course there has to be executive bathrooms. I hear you can catch being poor from a toilet seat.

> if this was true every company would be transparent

"Only assholes and sociopaths are transparent" does not mean "all assholes and sociopaths are transparent".

One thing people seem to forget regarding tradeoffs is that it's possible to do objectively bad ones: It's possible to have neither a bias for action nor curiosity. Mentioning both values is a reminder to be on the efficient frontier.

Further, you probably dont want to pick an extreme tradeoff. Getting a drop more action at the cost of huge learnings is a mistake as is getting very irrelevant knowledge at a huge cost of action.

Yes, it's possible to have suboptimal situations.

But no, communicating feel-good meaningless statements (like asking for people to both act fast without waiting for the details and to know the details about the consequence of their actions) is an infallible way to create apathy and move away from the Pareto frontier, not towards it.

I think you are slightly distorting both statements when you are constructing that contradiction. If you drill down into Amazons "bias for action", what they really want is that if an issue is urgent and blocking then people should feel empowered to deal with it without having a full knowledge. They should take that risk. That doesnt mean always acting fast without knowing details.

Meanwhile staying curious isn't necessarily about researching decisions in particular. It involves for instance ongoing tech education.

So if you think about it ongoing education is totally compatible with making occasional snap decisions.

If you choose values that have viable, realistic alternatives that a sane organization could reasonably target then you don't need anti-values explicitly stated. If this is not the case you have a bunch of platitudes. Your company values should often be interpreted (negatively) as strong opinions or even "an attitude". I think Basecamp does a good job of this, regardless if you agree with them.

The most famous anti-value was "Don't be evil" and look where that ended up.

"Don't be a dick" has good practical mileage.

The Kantian ideal of the Kingdom of Ends is pretty good one if you formulate it as "Don't use people", but that's too high a standard for almost any business today (especially the ones whose entire model is "using people").

One of my personal maxims is "Lead people not into temptation". In other words, no addictive (engagement) features, no lock-in, don't create dependency, make sure the code you write enables people and gives then freedom and choice (migration/federation etc). Again, those values are almost impossible to maintain in todays climate of hyper-exploitation.

Don't be evil, is not an anti-value. It's negatively-stated-yet-positive value.

The article says people should state values as a tradeoff. So for google it should have been something like:

Favor not being evil over making more money.

I think "favor not being evil over making more money" is exactly how the "don't be evil" motto is commonly interpreted.

I’d think it’s commonly interpreted as “don’t be evil” where the cost of not being evil isn’t specified.

As a shareholder, I think that not making as much money as possible is the real evil here. I always interpreted "don't be evil" as "don't waste money building an aquarium for sharks with lasers on their heads". I never in my darkest nightmares thought it meant "shut down profitable centers of corporate growth just because some bleeding hearts say that it's bad to pollute developing countries with planned obsolescent e-waste."

Poe's law right here. I really had no idea if this was genuine or satire the first 3 times I read it. I'm pretty sure it's satire.

Yeah, the ambiguity was intentional, and you're right.

Your problem is that you are "as a shareholder" where the values are the business proposition to the customers.

Also your problem is that you favor evil ways of making money, but don't call it evil, instead of owning the evil.

In American capitalism the investors are the real customers, not the consumers.

Of all the massive cash fires at Google (Cloud) you’re concerned about the shark photonics lab? That one might actually pay off some day with meaningful improvements in marine fiber optic cables. Given how important deep sea optics are for Google’s core business it is a negligible cost with a huge upside.

I always felt it was meant to imply something more like: "show the world that not being evil is a better business strategy".

I guess it didn't work for them so they just abandoned it.

"Don't be evil [at all costs]"

A truly uncompromising value, if that was the intent of Google's motto, sits at the pinnacle of the hierarchy and the tradeoff is literally everything else.

You could add "at all costs" to any value. That would likely make it less true instead of more bold.

You could only add it to values that are truly uncompromising, as I mentioned. Any value not at the tippy top of the hierarchy would bend to some other cost in some scenario.

“Don’t be evil” is a slightly edgier version of the typical corporate value of “Do the right thing” which I’ve seen in many companies. Sounds good, but vague enough to be meaningless.

"Don't be evil" was a good value. Google just didn't want to be bound by it.

"Google: We Are Beyond Good-versus-Evil" (TM)

Google meets Nietzsche.

Toyota's "Respect for People" was a sort of joke to me when I worked there, then I worked at Amazon and saw the opposite.

Toyota is a great company to work for, albeit super boring.

Most well-run operations tend to be boring, because there are not enough fuck-ups to make it interesting. Kind of what you want. Agree on the Amazon thing, despite being super efficient, and operationally well-run, they could care more about people. To put it diplomatically. Amazon is very consistent between blue and white collar so. That cannot be said about a lot other companies out there.

Being ethical is often aligned with being boring. I don't want the employees at my insurance company doing anything exciting with my personal information.

Or with two ton metal death traps going at 100mph.

Boring in manufacturing is good.

The ethical and boring axes are orthogonal.

I didn't expect to read that ethical and boring are aligned during Black History Month (US).

I would still argue that orderly actions that follow an established code tend to be boring, and that such codes are generally set up to encourage ethical actions.

"Don't be evil" is a dreadful credo. Allows a ridiculous amount of wiggle room. The fact that these very smart people formulated their beliefs in such a self-consciously childish manner should have been taken as a warning.

I don't think you are giving them enough credit.

Choosing "don't be evil" as a credo deliberately encourages others to view the company through a moral lens. It is an invitation to judge the company according to a higher standard than most businesses would hold themselves to. It makes explicit that the company takes responsibility for the moral implications of what they do instead of pretending to live in an amoral value-free universe like many other corporations do.

I think it was a courageous motto and I'm sad they dropped it.

Fair enough. Although I still think people should not have expected so vague an ethos to survive the transition to a huge, publicly traded company.

> One of my personal maxims is "Lead people not into temptation". In other words, no addictive (engagement) features, no lock-in, don't create dependency, make sure the code you write enables people and gives then freedom and choice (migration/federation etc). Again, those values are almost impossible to maintain in todays climate of hyper-exploitation.

This is the most insightful comment I've read this week. I'm surprised no one has made the connection before. It has deep historical meaning and deep implications for where we're headed.

I'd suggest the best example of anti-values is in the Agile Manifesto.

They state that they value (as an example) individuals and interactions over processes and tools. But they make it clear that while there's value in the things on the right, they value the things on the left more.

In the way the author describes, I always found this framing to be super helpful for decision-making.

It's also something that frustrated me about the (otherwise fantastic) Amazon Leadership Principles. When should I dive deep and when should I have bias for action? I realise now that I should have bias for action when it's a reversible decision and dive deep when it's a one way door. But it's not clear from the principles themselves in the way it's clear in the Agile Manifesto.

I’ve come to wonder if Google’s “don’t be evil” secretly always meant “don’t be truly evil, just skirt the edge of being evil”. It’s much more profitable being in the grey zone.

Not my company, but Zocdoc has the best values I’ve ever seen exactly because they all have anti-values:

Patients First

Important, not Immediate

Learners before Masters

Together, not Alone

Progress before Perfection

Adaptable, not Comfortable

> move fast and break things

Is better represented as "move fast and break important things" but what kind of management is going to sign up to that.

In essence it becomes "move fast", which becomes another way of saying, "get things done faster or you're not meeting company values and we can blame you for that." Yay for management doublespeak

There's usually some "take initiative" value, which in practice is undermined by how the leaders lead.

Punctuality-maniac policy. Take your seat at 09:01 (or 08:59!) rather than at 09:00 precisely and you're fucked. A delegate from a partner company or an employment candidate who would arrive to an appointed meeting 10 minutes later or earlier is considered a dick and treated with lowest priority.

Our old project manager mandated we must have daily stand-ups.

They were always at least five minutes late for what should have been a five minute stand up because they knew we'd have to wait for them.

I managed to get team agreement we start no later then 2 minutes past, no matter who isn't there, management included, no judgement for late comers but the meeting is starting as we have work to get on with.

Suddenly said project manager started showing up on time. Who knew?

I really like the “no guilt, but start on time” model, especially now that we don’t have the disruption of someone entering the room. I am often late because I am in meetings 6 hours a day which can lead to a “doctor effect” of cascading lateness. But for things like standup, just GO!

What do you do when the management comes in late but demands a recap lol. Fwiw I have seen folks who say they don’t but rekindle a lot of discussions directly / indirectly and do it anyway. Obviously none at our current company - my team does slack daily updates.

IOW - I see a lot of efforts at ‘curtailing’ mgmt powers. In my experience- Bottom up management or manipulation only goes so far - that’s not far. Pick your managers people. You want nice ones who also know how to hire well.

Why is it considered a dick move to be early as an employment candidate? As long as the candidate is unobtrusive and keeps themselves busy, all it shows me is that they value the opportunity enough to budget extra time for things like traffic, etc.

(Of course, now we do everything remote, so I wouldn’t even know if they are early)

As a child I have been taught everybody should do their best to arrive as precisely on time as possible yet +/- 15 minutes is always absolutely fine. Nobody is a precision machine, traffic is always a disaster so that's natural and being crazy pursuing extreme punctuality is just unreasonable stress for everyone. Apparently obsessive-compulsive punctuality, being sure everyone must arrive on time with sub-minute precision is a psychological disorder caused by some sort of childhood trauma. It was a shock for me to encounter this but given the fact the job, the company and the boss himself are pretty awesome in all the other aspects I take this with understanding and acceptance.

Punctuality Over Progress

Search without Surveillance

We work hard to rapidly capture our market space! (But as a result, sales is allowed to bully engineering, and our technical debt is growing faster than the Internal Revenue Code)

my old company had motivational posters plastered all over the place with these values: integrity, teamwork, excellence, fun. felt like i was in middle school again.

When my son was looking to buy his first house I noticed a lot of people putting motivational messages on their walls. These sort of things: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32630732796.html

I just don't understand some people.

There is a cultural aspect to this. American often try to be pro-stuff. French are always anti-stuff (pro life in the US, anti abortion in France, etc)

Does that actually result in any meaningful differences between these countries in the debate?

Its not an election issue in one of those countries, and in the other it is ... I doubt you even need to take a public stand on exactly what your position is on the issue to run for office.

It used to be, but the public debate moved away once legislation changed.

Usualy being against something is associate with being aginst change, and the other way around.

On this specific topic, things are absolutely not similar otherwise, so it's difficult to compare. More generally, French people can tell you immediately that's not possible because... which sounds fatalistic but it s not, we're just saying here are the roadblocks I see, please convince me they can be alleviated and I'm totally in.

I've had French people have tell me about this, that French people are whingers and complainers, and it's hard to get anything done because of it.

'The Purpose of a Business is to Create a Customer'

Drucker - 'The Practice of Management' is full of common sense 'anti-values'

My companys antivalue?

That wfh means you work in every time zone.

One of my favorites is “Tell it like it is” which has the heavily implied second part: even when the customer won’t like it.

Honestly and respectfully, I would love to work for a company that does not have this theater of Diversity & Inclusion. To me, it is extremely fake and not genuine. Instead, work for a company that truly embraces people from all over the world with not a peep about racism/diversity/__insert_divisive_narratives__. It would be amazing.

The only values that are real are the ones that contribute to making money.

Values go out of the window real quick whenever they negatively impact revenue, whatever they are.

I like the idea of anti values, certainly much better, but even there you might as well not have them imo.

This is a common sentiment but it is wrong.

Making money is just one of the operational constraints that a company has to take into account.

Companies exist to fulfil a purpose. That purpose is not just "make money".

Steve Jobs founded Apple not to just "make money". I think this does not need further elaboration.

The same applies to Tesla and SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk.

Companies that only exist to make money are probably terrible by any measure you choose.

While just "making money" may sound a bit short-sighted, it IS the reason for the company's existence.

Hopefully, however, profit is correlated with/caused by providing value to humanity, which in turn encourages "good behavior" from companies. If a company is seen as "bad", it starts to lose clients.

That's not the point I'm trying to make. I agree that it's not the only purpose, and even if it was I don't think that's bad per se. You could also see it as fulfilling a purpose to make money, they often go together, it's probably the ideal situation.

My point is; As long as making money and their values align it's all good, but if decisions need to be made that present a choice between values and profit/growth it becomes very hard to choose for values. Especially once a company goes public, gets acquired, or needs significant investment, it might not even have the option to live by its values.

That's why I think values are only real/true if they align with profit/growth. Similar to what the article describes; what do they really mean? How much impact do they really have? How much of it is PR?

What it comes down to imo is; Is there willingness to sacrifice growth and revenue for values? I'd say in most cases the answer to that is no, and I would much prefer it if companies are just clear and honest about that.

If you do count other forms of companies, like not-for-profits, then it's a totally different story of course.

This anti-value really bugs me. Too many companie's System Administrators view PC as meaning Windows. People seem to have forgotten there is Linux Desktop in the world as well as other operating systems.

TL;DR PC means Personal Computer, Linux PC, Mac PC, Windows PC.

"Human Resources" Department

I think that says enough about how company and it bosses think.

Never forget: Human is an adjective in that phrase.

Still, it's better to be a resource than the next level, which is a cost.

I actively try to use people instead of resources in a conversation, have never understood the need to use resources as a word.

Could be it's just a relic from the HR department.

I fight that same linguistic fight. People seem to pretty quickly get it and usually appreciate hearing the tone aet that “our company uses this other perspective; please use people words when talking about people.”

I’ve noticed a pattern that this usage seems to be somewhat more prevalent in south Asians. (I mean this only as an observation on word choice patterns, with zero conclusion or implication on underlying thought patterns. I haven’t had enough British colleagues to notice if it came from British other-colonies roots or not.)

> I fight that same linguistic fight.

I don't even think it's a fight. I say "computer" when I mean computer, why wouldn't I say "people" when I mean people?

"Human Resources" departments are a relict of a dark and long gone past.

It's called "people and culture" now.

> It's called "people and culture" now.

There's something broken about the highly extroverted non-technical types that are attracted to HR roles thinking they're in charge of shaping the 'culture' of an engineering organization. Please keep them far away from that particular role.

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